"If you value your life, you will turn around and leave this garden before I decide that you are not worth the effort of an interrogation," Gillian said, his voice dropping into a register so cold it seemed to freeze the humid night air.
He did not wait for the intruder to respond. He moved with the predatory grace of a creature born into the shadows, his blade appearing in his hand as if summoned by his sheer will. The stranger, a man cloaked in the drab gray of a low-level syndicate scout, barely had time to widen his eyes in terror before Gillian was upon him. There was no grand fight, no exchange of blows, only the sickening sound of metal meeting resistance and the muffled thud of a body hitting the damp earth of the Mourning Manor back garden.
Gillian stood over the fallen scout
